The use of Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) technology has increased in recent years, allowing high-speed (i.e., broadband) access from a central location, typically a telephone central office, to multiple subscribers in homes or offices located at remote sites. One of the major problems associated with adoption of DSL technology is the cost and complexity of initial setup of a DSL modem at a remote location. In most of the cases, the setup (configuration) cannot be done without a visit to the remote location by an engineer/technician from the service provider. This leads to increased cost and complexity in configuration of the DSL modem as well as increased dependence on the availability of the engineer/technician for seamless and faster configuration of the DSL modem.
In the event where a customer has changed the service provider, the customer is often required to buy a new DSL modem as the older DSL modem is not compatible with the new service provider. Even in those cases where a new DSL modem is not required to be bought, the configuration process is tedious and complicated and cannot be done by the consumer alone without any help from the engineer or the technician. As a result, the customer is left dependent on the availability of the engineer to come to the customer's site and configure the DSL modem. Even in those circumstances where the customer is with the same service provider when he relocates to a new location, the configuration still needs to be done again which lead to service outage and increased installation costs.
Moreover, DSL modem and other customer premise equipment are managed via wireline, wherein one Virtual LAN (VLAN) port is reserved permanently for device management. Reserving a VLAN port only for Authentication, Authorization, and Accounting (AAA) and device management is a potential revenue loss to the service providers as the reserved VLAN resources cannot be used for any other purpose and do not operate at their optimal level as they are not fully utilized at all time. Further, a large amount of time is required to locate and re-configure the DSL modem and other customer equipments when there is damage on wireline or in the event of a broken wireline leading to overall bad customer experience.
Thus, there is a need for an efficient method and system for auto-configuration of a DSL modem in a wireline broadband network which reduces the complexity of configuration process, reduces the overall costs and increases the overall customer experience.